The quickest "kill the fleas right now" method seems to be to give your cats a Capstar tablet, which you can get at your vet. This kills the fleas within a day, but it also only works for a day. It's good for cats that are being moved to a new, flea-free location to make sure they are not bringing any of the buggers with them, but doesn't help much if they stay in a flea-infested environment.

For longterm treatment and in flea habitats, the ones that you rub into the cat's neck are more useful. Make sure you get something from your vet and not what they sell in grocery stores etc. Some flea medications can be downright deadly for cats! Frontline is good, but I had the case where the local fleas became resistant to it. So I had to switch to Advantage this summer. Another possibility is Revolution. All are topical drops that you rub into the cat's skin at the neck.

Also, for every flea found on the cats there are dozens around the house that you can't see, plus flea larvae, eggs etc. My vet gave me Siphotrol to spray the carpets, and I washed pretty much everything washable including cat beds, throw rugs, curtains etc. In the basement, I set off a couple of "flea bombs" that you can get at most garden/hardware stores. That seemed to work fine - had to treat the house two summers in a row (thanks to the Frontline resistance problem) and Siphotrol plus flea bombs plus thorough cleaning got rid of the fleas in the house every time. The Siphotrol has methoprene in it, which is an insect growth regulator that prevents fleas from reaching the adult stage, so it's more effective against fleas but also more expensive. You have to vacuum daily and repeat the spray/bomb treatment after 2-3 weeks to catch the ones that hatch from hidden eggs in the meantime. Also be very careful that the cats are nowhere near those sprays and bombs when you are using them. Cats are very susceptible to pesticide poisoning.

If you don't like to use pesticides or can't keep the cats away while cleaning, I hear that borax works, too. You sprinkle it over the carpets and it kills the fleas by drying them out. You can then vacuum the borax and dead fleas out of the carpet. I haven't tried this yet and don't know how effective it is, but it's less toxic and therefore safer for the cats.

Another cleaning trick is to cut a flea collar in pieces and put it into your vacuum bag to kill any fleas sucked in there while cleaning. Be careful though as it may release toxic pesticide fumes inside a hot vacuum cleaner, so I do this with the windows open and keep the cats away until I'm done cleaning. The eggs you vacuum out of the carpet may hatch in the vacuum bag, too, so if you don't use the collar-in-the-bag trick to kill them it's best to remove the used bags from the house after each cleaning.

I know this all sounds like a lot of work and it sure is. But if you have flea eggs in the carpet and don't clean them out, your cats will have fleas again as soon as the Frontline (or whatever you end up using) wears off. If you only have a few fleas around, you might be able to get rid of them by simply treating your cats for 2-3 months until they've lured all the fleas out of the carpet onto them and they've all been killed. Fleas are good at finding hidden corners around the house where they can survive though.

P.S. You might also want to watch for signs of tapeworm over the next couple of weeks or months. Whenever my cats had fleas, they've also had tapeworms. It's easy to treat with usually just one tablet from the vet that kills the worm, but they usually only treat for it if it has been confirmed that the cat has a tapeworm. They can get them from eating fleas while grooming. Tapeworms show up as small, dried worm fragments (look like rice grains or sesame seeds) around the cat's favorite sleeping spots. I usually collect two or three fragments into a small plastic bag and bring them to the vet for identification and to get the matching pill that kills them. It seems there are at least two kinds and I've gotten different types of pills for them.

Is it Zodiac Spot On or Zodiac Spot On Plus? The Spot On only contains the insect growth regulator Methoprene. If it's that, it's harmless (and probably also pretty useless for actually killing fleas - it just delays their development). If it's the Spot On Plus, it has Etofenprox in it, which is a pyrethroid ether insecticide. I wouldn't want to mix that with any other insecticide, especially in a cat. You might want to check the label of the stuff you bought. If it's the Methoprene only version, it's likely safe to put the Advantage on. If it's the Plus version, I guess it's a little more tricky. Advantage is usually safe, but I'm not sure what adding it on top of another insecticide might do.

As a general rule, anything containing pyrethroid insecticides should not be used on cats at all. If you're unsure about a flea product, you can search for the insecticide on this page and figure out into which chemical group it falls. I've found pretty much all insecticides I ever needed to look up on that page, so the list seems fairly complete. Any product (e.g. sprays, foggers etc) with pyrethroids in it should be used with extreme caution around cats, or better yet avoided.

Try to use Bayer Seresto Collar or another way, for example spray like Vet's Best Home Spray. But be careful, sellers write that these collars can be used for three months, but in fact they operate a month - one and a half.

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